Braces, High School, and Boys, Oh My!
by fainting-ostrich
Summary: When you were a little kid, did you ever wish that you had razor teeth, or fangs, or whatever? Maybe you wanted to be a dog or a cat, or even a shark. Great! That's a perfect wish, for little kids. Not for a five foot eight lanky middle schooler with bright red hair. Er, excuse me, high schooler. (Fic also on Archive OOO )


When you were a little kid, did you ever wish that you had razor teeth, or fangs, or whatever? Maybe you wanted to be a dog or a cat, or even a shark. Great! That's a perfect wish, for little kids. Not for a five foot eight lanky middle schooler with bright red hair. Er, excuse me, high schooler. Today is that day that every kid either looks forward to or wishes they would drop dead before they had to enter the doors on their first day. The first day of high school. Ok, maybe just having every single one of your teeth extremely sharp to the point where if you so much as open your mouth around others they'll probably crack some joke about the movie Jaws (I've heard plenty of those ones) or avoid you for the rest of your life, isn't so bad. But slap on wiry braces and the teasing goes from level one to level fifty. Ever since I was born, my first tooth grew in very sharp, which proved to be very painful for my parents because they told me I liked to bite a lot. They thought that it might have just been one, but as they kept growing in, they were all just as sharp as the first. After many trips to the orthidontist, we found out that they weren't going away. Then of course, if that wasn't bad enough, they clamped braces onto them in hopes that they wouldn't start growing in weird places. I never noticed, but once I overheard my mom talking to my doctor and they had said that they were growing in rows, just like a shark. Once we tried filing them down, and it worked. But then I kept losing my teeth and it became too expensive to keep that up so I had to settle for monthly trips to the dentist to make sure that the braces were doing their job and there weren't any teeth growing out of place. So I have been doomed all through elementary and middle school with my 'shark' teeth and braces. I always ignore the comments made by my peers and have mostly learned just to keep my mouth shut as much as possible because once it got so bad that my little sister had to beat up a few guys. I don't know what was worse, getting the shit beat out of you, or watching your little sister kick the asses of the three guys that just beat the shit out of you. I guess it was a pretty good thing since things seemed to have calmed down after that, people didn't think it was worth getting a lashing from the young girl with her bright ponytail just so they could kill their boredom by throwing punches at my 'brace face'. Most of the people in my middle school were used to seeing my awkward combination of pearly white chompers strung with wires, but now there's going to be a lot more people to worry about. Hopefully today will go better than I expect...  
One foot after the other, I held my usual staring contest with the ground. The quiet squeaking of my red tennis shoes against the ground was drowned out as I took my first step into the double doors of the towering building. Instead of a shark, I felt as if I was a minnow in the middle of an entire ocean of sharks. Even though I couldn't see them, I could feel the intense gazes from both girls and boys. Their glances were probably hot enough that they would surely melt me into a puddle of awkwardness if I stood in one place for too long. Maybe it would have been better if I had let them do just that because a puddle of awkwardness sounds a lot better than the rest of the events that unfolded before me that day. /So I think the first thing the registration paper said was to find your locker./ I pulled out the crumpled up paper I had recieved in the mail earlier that week and scanned over the contents. /So locker 349 is down that hall/. Luckily the first locker to my right was 300 and it ascended down the math hall. I counted the numbers silently in my head until I reached 349. There was already a short boy with silver-y looking hair positioned in front of it so I figured that it would be a good idea to wait until he moved so I didn't have to talk to him. I watched as he glanced down at what appeared to be a registration paper and then reach out to the locker and begin turning the lock. Wait what? /I thought that was my locker?/ Checking again, I made sure that I didn't read the number wrong and I definitely didn't. 349, both the number on the paper and the number on the locker matched. Maybe the boy was confused? I approached him from behind before gently clearing my throat.  
"Uh, is your locker 349 too?" The short boy continued trying to put in the combination, failing several times before turning around to look at me. "Oh! Sorry, you were talking to me!" He laughed, offering an apologetic smile as he placed his hands casually behind his back and linked his fingers. "I'm Nitori Ai, your locker partner for the first cemester!" The dumbfounded look I was giving the boy continued until he blinked a few times and quickly jumped and formed an 'o' with his lips. "Did you not hear? They had to put some of the "N's" with the "M's" because they ran out of lockers haha! Oh did that sound rude? Sorry!" I continued staring at the silver haired boy, er, Ai, until I figured that I was probably making him extremely uncomfortable. "No it-" I barely opened my mouth to speak when the other boy brought his hands to his mouth and let out a shrill noise and bolted around me, dropping his registration paper in his wake. I quickly turned around to see what was behind me that could have made that poor boy scream. Nothing...? My heart sank as realization thunked me hard in the head. Great, I had scared off the first person I tried to talk to, as well as my locker partner. I sighed and stepped forward, taking Ai's empty place in front of the locker before turning the knob in the combination. I managed to open it on my first try, which left me wondering why it had been so hard for Ai. As expected, there wasn't anything inside so I removed my binder from my backpack and shoved it inside the top rack, leaving space for Ai underneath. After shutting the locker and picking up my partner's registration paper, I began to wonder what I should do with it. /Probably lost and found/, I thought to myself as I began steering myself towards the office. With a quick glance at my cell, I knew that there was plenty of time to drop by the office and find my first class. Luckily for me, I knew the office was across from the front doors. The lost and found box was very empty since it was only the beginning of the first day so I had the oppertunity to be the first one to return something, probably the best thing that had happened to me today. Once that had been taken care of, I checked my own map on the registration paper, locating where my first class would be. Earth Systems was in the science hall (not to my surprise) somewhere near the end. It was as if some great entity in the world didn't want me going to the places I needed to be because there were two students standing in front of the doorway to the class. Asking them to move was completely out of the question, so I tried to wait until they moved, which was hopefully soon. While I was waiting, I couldn't help but listen in on their conversation. It wasn't like I ever tried to hear what other people were saying, but sometimes it's hard not to when that short blonde is being so loud.  
"...great Haru? Our first classes are across from each other! Maybe we will get desks close to the door so we can send notes to each other through paper airplanes! Oh but would we get seen? Hmmm... What do you think?" I figured that the short boy must be talking to his 'girlfriend' Haru or something, who else would be that esctatic about something like that? Poor girl, whoever it was, having to deal with someone like that. The other person didn't respond to the boy with a trilling voice so he continued talking by himself. "Oh!" He clasped his hands together. "Did you know that the Earth Systems teacher in there used to be on a swim team? A looooon time ago of course!" What? How did the subject go from paper planes to a swim team? I didn't know, but I kept quiet, staring at the ground and I shuffled my feet awkwardly as I waited for them to move. The annoying boy continued to blabber on about different subjects while the other person stood there without a single word. The bell sounded sharply, causing myself and the blonde to straighten up in surprise. "Sorry Haru, I better get going now! I hope we are in the same lunch!" He skipped by me, most likely never noticing I was there in the first place. When he had left, I finally had a clear view of the person he had been talking to. It wasn't a girl at all, in fact it was a boy, a very extremely attractive boy with soot black hair, bangs swiped to one side, hanging around his eyes that were so blue I swear that they must hold a thousand tiny oceans in them. Those oceans poured right into my flaming red eyes, melting the flames and sending the color pouring down my face into my cheeks until they felt hot. /Shit he's staring at me, what do I do?/ my brain felt like a jumbled mess as I did the first thing I could think of and flashed the boy a stupid smile before realizing that that was not the best, but in fact /the worst/ thing I could have done. /shit shit shit no/ the color in my cheeks flared out to my ears as I brought my hands in front of my face and turned the other way, running until I came to the first bathroom I could find. 


End file.
